Exercise the Demons Part 12

His attempt to invoke a binding again got cut off when Kelly drew her hellfire sword and shoved it next to his face. “Finish that sentence,” she cooed directly in his ear, “and your last memory is going to be fellating this.”

Sean wisely shut his mouth, his eyes wide with terror to the point where she could almost only see the whites. “Good boy,” she whispered, deliberately repeating the same tone he had used when calling her “good girl,” earlier.

Sean whimpered.

Pathetic, she thought, although she knew rationally that a few weeks ago, had she been in his shoes, she would have been snivelling every bit as hard. Then again, even a few weeks ago, she wouldn’t have tried to chain someone up in her office and torture them into subservience, so she figured she was still winning at life. “So you needed the cuffs to invoke the pain, huh?” He nodded under her hand. “Glad I called that right. I doubt the binding would have worked even now though – I dunno if you know this, but earlier tonight your angel buddy was hovering behind you.”

“Oh God,” he muttered, and Kelly could see the realization of how utterly screwed he was spread across his face.

“I don’t think He’s here right now, Sean. Or if He is, He’s on not-your-side.” She had going to say “on my side,” but that felt…so very wrong. Also, Kelly, maybe cool it with the one-liners? part of her asked the rest of herself.

“The angel. Sariel. How did he find you?”

Sam sniffed. “I was praying for some way to undo what you did. I kept having nightmares where I was trapped as that little, that little,” he saw her sword and swallowed whatever unsavory name he had been about to use for his former victim, “that little kid. They were even happening during the day! I was going insane. Sariel appeared, told me what you were, that you could undo what you had done.”

Kelly let out a long sigh, and the smoke and cinders that releashed caused Sam to yelp. She couldn’t tell if it was fear or if the cinders had hit his face and burned him. “So he taught you the phases and gave you the writing for the handcuffs, and your dumb ass used markers to apply them.”

He nodded.

“And you didn’t think I could break out. Which is why you were being extra douchy there.”

Again, he could only nod.

“I’m not a demon, Sean. I’m just personal trainer trying to start her own business.”

He looked up at her with wild eyes that traced down to the hellfire sword in her free hand, and she sighed again. “Okay, so I was just a personal trainer. Things got weird.”

She studied Sean for a moment. The question was now, what to do with him. Despite her threat, she didn’t thinks he could just kill a man in cold blood like that. On the other hand, he knew about her, and that could be-

His phone started to buzz in his pocket, a high chiming sound coming out of it. Not a ringtone, too shrill – an alarm clock. “What is that for?” she asked, leaning in again.

The rest of Sean’s protest was lost on Kelly, who was distracted by something far more important going on. Her hand was suddenly sinking into Sean’s head, like it was made of silly putty, although he didn’t seem to notice. Too startled to do anything to resist it, her body slowly followed her arm, making a wet and altogether disgusting sound as she sunk into Sean’s mind.

Then she was on the floor. She was laying on the floor, and something was scratching on her face – her beard stubble on the carpet.

Wait, what? She reached up and felt her face.

Only it wasn’t her face. It was Sean’s face. Sean’s body. Her clothes were laying on top of Sean, and she was inside Sean, puppeting his body.

Oh God, oh shit. I just possessed him? She thought, feeling his heartrate rise on top of the adrenaline and fear.

Youpossessed me?* he thought, which seemed to confirm her theory. It also confirmed that Sean was, in fact, alive and well in here. Oh God please don’t make me puke pea soup all over my walls.

“Shut up,” she said aloud in a voice far deeper than her normal tones. To her pleasant surprise, he did. “Don’t listen to what I’m thinking, either.”

She didn’t know if that would work, but it would have to do. She started to walk through what had happened in her mind. So you change demonic powers ever so often. Apparently, that happens at midnight – which you’ve normally been asleep during, so it tracks that it happened then. And midnight happened, so you lost the powers of a…what did Chemosh call it? A Knight. Twenty bucks says this time I’m a possessor, or something like that.

She got Sean’s body to its feet and walked over to the mirror. There was Sean, alright, and he looked…perfectly normal. No black veins, no red eyes, nothing that movies had told her would indicate demonic possession.

For a brief moment, she considered using this to humiliate him further, but that seemed like a needlessly petty waste of time. Plus, if she wasn’t going to kill him, no point to antagonizing him further.

The phone buzzed again in Sean’s pocket. She pulled it out to see he’d gotten a new text message, but the phone was locked and didn’t use a fingerprint, just a PIN. Without that, she wouldn’t be able to-

5943, Sean provided. It didn’t sound like his waking voice though – it had a sleepy quality to it.

She tried the PIN and the phone unlocked. The text was from Natalie. My ex. We’ve been talking about getting back together, she’s been helping me deal with my nightmares since you gave them to me. I reached out to her to because she was friends with Eugene and I hoped apologizing would make the nightmares go away. They didn’t.

“Thank you for the wonderful summation,” she muttered out loud. The text read “Hey, can we talk? I haven’t heard from you all day and was worried.”

Kelly shrugged and responding for Sean. “Everything okay, just don’t feel myself. Gonna sleep it off.” She hit send, then looked at what she had typed. She’d added thumbs up emoji and two sleeping faces. The actual words were the ones she’d chosen, but Kelly hated text abbreviations. I guess I’m texting as Sean. That’s handy. She scrolled up the text messages just out of curiosity until she came across one Natalie probably only wanted Sean to see.

Instead of blushing and closing the app, she felt a moment of pride, a moment of “oh yeah, look at how hot my chick is.” She shook his head and scrolled away. “Apparently, your hormones are a problem.”

Speaking to him seemed to be what Sean needed to reassert himself. Get out of my body! Let me go!

Kelly winced. Sean’s head already hurt from where she’d slammed it into the floor and dug her nails in, and now that he was shouting…Keep yourself calm or I’ll banish you to the back of your mind again, she mentally snarled at him.

His mental voice stopped screaming at her to get out. Look, Kelly. This is my body. You can’t just…

Kelly looked in the mirror and gave Sean a malicious grin using his own mouth. “Can’t just what?” she said out loud. “Can’t just use supernatural powers to trap you against your will, leaving you helpless against forces you only partially understand? Can’t just keep using those same powers to shut you up just because you’re annoying me? Can’t just make you feel terrified and helpless without knowing if you’ll ever be free again? Which of this, Sean, seems like it’s not something I can do? What I am saying, Sean, is that this is what you did to me. This is not something I can’t do, Sean, it’s Karmic a balance. What I am saying, Sean, is that you’ve made your fucking bed, you don’t get to bitch if I shove you straight into it”

She realized she was screaming the last bit in the mirror, Sean’s heart pounding as she did. “That’s right,” she muttered. “Sean has anger issues, and that would be at least partially physical.”

Screw you, I don’t have fucking anger issues!

Kelly decided the best course of action would be to just let that statement hang in the mental air and let Sean stew on how self-contradictory it was. She bent down to rub Sean’s temples, trying to clear the headache they were sharing.

When she looked back up, a hooded figure was behind her in the mirror, regarding her expression seriously. She whirled around and shouted in shock in Sean’s voice.

“BE NOT AFRAID,” Sariel intoned. “I WISH TO SEE THE DEMON.”

Kelly stared into that hooded face, trying desperately to figure out what to say.

Oh, man, Sean chimed in from the back of her mind, his tone a bit singsong with glee. You’re screwed.